InMotion is a business-oriented website hosting company based in Virgina.
Since its inception in 2001, InMotion Hosting has grown to become one of the largest independent web hosts on earth. The company is a rare holdout from the tentacles of the massive conglomerate Endurance International, which owns such popular hosting companies as HostGator and Bluehost.
But does independence actually bring better quality service? We signed up for an account on InMotion to find out…
Pros and Cons
- Pros
- Cons
- InMotion has a great uptime record and fast servers.
- Customer support is extremely friendly, knowledgeable, and easy to work with.
- A three-month money back guarantee enables you to try before you commit.
- The service requires identity verification, which can slow you down considerably.
- The best introductory rates only apply to multi-year packages.
Getting Started
We signed up for a one year WordPress web hosting plan. Upon clicking the Order Now button, however, we were surprised to see that the advertised price was only applicable to a two-year plan. This is the kind of bait and switch tactic that we hate seeing on a web hosting. After all, if they can’t be upfront about something as simple as cost, what other facts are they obstructing?
This is the kind of bait and switch tactic that we hate seeing on a web hosting. After all, if they can’t be upfront about something as simple as cost, what other facts are they obstructing?
The rest of the process went off without a hitch as we selected our domain name and paid for the service. Unfortunately, we hit a snag when we learned that we needed to confirm our identity,
Unfortunately, we hit a snag when we learned that we needed to confirm our identity, significantly slowing down the process for us and making us wait to get started building a website. Once they were satisfied that we are who we said we are, we were allowed to log in and begin our website setup.
Features
For all of the issues we encountered upon signing up for the service, we were pleasantly surprised by how good some of the services that come standard are.
InMotion uses solid-state drive servers, which is not only the most modern option available but also provides for great website speeds. In fact, it enables them to offer loading times that are 40% faster than companies that don’t use SSD servers.
InMotion caters to businesses which expect excellent uptimes and their record clocks in at around 99.97%. This is thanks to the business-class hardware that the company uses to ensure as little downtime as possible.
Another rarity offered by InMotion is free data backups. Where other hosts usually charge for something like this, it is nice that InMotion offers it as a freebie.
Comprehensive malware protection rounds out the impressive feature set.
cPanel
InMotion Hosting uses a standard cPanel which is user-friendly, but whose graphics are somewhat dated. The entire platform is much less design-conscious than the competition’s but at the end of the day, it is just as usable and does not affect the site you host in any way.
InMotion offers one-click installs of the most popular CMS platforms, including WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, in addition to various eCommerce tools.
Support
InMotion is a customer support leader with a good reputation for solving problems quickly.
Connecting to a live chat took just a couple of minutes and in our tests of the support agents, they were able to figure out our problems quickly and help us alleviate them.
Support is available via live chat, Skype, telephone, and through a support center, which offers solutions to common problems and frequently asked questions.
Pricing
InMotion Hosting plans start at $5.99 per month. There are three different plans from which you can choose:
- Launch – The most basic plan costs $6.99 per month for one year and $5.99 per month for two years. It includes a free domain, and unlimited disk space, bandwidth, and emails.
- Power – The middle tier and best value plan costs $8.99 per month for one year and $7.99 per month for two years. It includes a 2x performance upgrade from the Launch plan.
- Pro – The most expensive plan, which is aimed at developers and growing businesses, costs $17.99 per month when billed monthly, $14.99 per month for six months, and $13.99 per month for one year.
Conclusion
Despite a bumpy start, we were quite happy with InMotion Hosting overall.
The number of bonus services was more than enough to excuse the issues we faced in the beginning and the service proved to be speedy and reliable.
We recommend InMotion overall, especially if your needs relate to small businesses and those who rely on a well-functioning website for their income.
